In the Dark Places of Wisdom

This is the beginning of a book review, primarily because I've just read the first few pages and was deeply affected by what I read. So, book review, part one.

I've picked up In the Dark Places of Wisdom, by Peter Kingsley, several times in a bookstore, only to return it to the shelf. Not quite ready to recognize what I was then in the midst of experiencing. It makes more sense when we have at least partial hindsight.

But when my partner picked up the book as 'required reading' for a Wisdom school session he's attending, and then I saw a profound reference attributed to it in a book I'm reading, I picked it up to get more information on the reference. For a writer, or mystic, this is how research unfolds.

Instead of just going to the page referenced, I dove into the first page and kept reading, seeing the hints to my own journey through a bona fide Dark Night of the Soul and spiritual-soul awakening.

Kingsley writes, "It could be said that this process of awakening is profoundly healing. It is. The only trouble with saying this is that we've come to have such a superficial idea of healing. For most of us, healing is what makes us comfortable and eases the pain. It's what softens, protects us. And yet what we want to be healed of is often what will heal us if we can stand the discomfort and the pain...and if we face it a little longer, we find that it teaches us the way to attain what we long for."

He begins the next chapter with, "If you're lucky, at some point in your life you'll come to a complete dead end. Or to put it another way: if you're lucky you'll come to a crossroads and see that the path to the left leads to hell, that the path to the right leads to hell, that the road straight ahead leads to hell and that if you try to turn around you'll end up in complete and utter hell. Every way leads you to hell and there's no way out, nothing left for you to do. Nothing can possibly satisfy you anymore. Then, if you're ready, you'll start to discover inside yourself what you always longed for but were never able to find."

I don't think I've seen a clearer description of that 'crossroads' - the place that Dante referred to when he wrote "In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the true way was wholly lost"

This is the territory of Sophia, the Black Madonna, the Dark Goddess. She of Many Names.

Most people run, panicked, in the other direction from such things. As Kingsley notes, our Western culture avoids Dark Nights like the plague and works furiously to stay busy, thriving, 'achieving', and 'plugged in' to some sort of distraction so we don't have to 'go there'. It's uncomfortable, to say the least.

I completely understand; I didn't go into the Dark Night, or dark places of Wisdom, by conscious choice. I went kicking, screaming, and clawing at whatever seemed 'secure' and 'permanent', which didn't end up being very much (at least according to what we've been taught to define as 'secure' or 'permanent.).

Yet as Kingsley points out at the very beginning of his book, the dark places of Wisdom are precisely where we'll find what we most desperately seek. We've just been looking in all the wrong places.

Thankfully, that 'dark road' of initiation is being illuminated once again, by some of us who've traveled it and are reclaiming the lost wisdom of our ancestors. Kinglsey's book seems one meaty bread crumb on the path.

That's definitely cause for celebration.

Blessings and Good Juju,

Jamie

Comments

[JamesDX]

Maybe this is me talking nonsense, but it seems like Google isn't a company run strictly by the top and they seem to be doing quite well.

[Jamie]

Greetings, James.
Thanks for sharing your comment. I'm not sure of its relationship to this post, but know that Google does seem to be doing quite well, and seem to have a culture that relies on many people's input and efforts in order to thrive. They do a lot of good work through their foundation as well.
Thanks again for stopping by Sophia's Children.
Blessings,
Jamie

[Robert]

Hello Jamie,
Well said, for integrity is not based on the medals we wear but on the scars we silently bear.

As for mystics,well, you will never find them sitting under a tree, you find them clawing at the roots.

For those who cannot see the light of their shadow, are destined to walk in their own darkness.

Take Care
R

[Jamie Walters]

Greetings, Robert. Thank you for taking time to post and share your insight. Integrity, like many things, seems grown from the inside out (or from the roots up), doesn't it? I appreciate your comments.
Blessings,
Jamie